Looking for cancer? You won't find it here!

The huge rant.

Basically the idea about the new blog is, that I didn't want to continue posting stuff on baka-tsuki.org and having the releases labelled as 'baka-tsuki' releases.

Now, some of you will say that it's because I want to have my name on the releases... I do, but not for the reasons you might think of.

First, I've been really happy to translate stuff and post on baka-tsuki until now. It was a nice environment where I had a lot of freedom and could slowly but surely post my translations and administer them. I'm thankful to baka-tsuki for allowing me to do that.

However, recently the baka-tsuki community, and also some of its administration started changing. The unwritten and unregulated standards for quality, below which the translations hardly ever went except for a few individual cases, have shattered. Some members of the community and administration have been actively encouraging low quality translations done by amateurs with no knowledge of language and no dedication to researching. Not only they were allowed to post that subpar garbage, but they are also encouraged and some of the administration legitimized their actions. As a translator I do not approve and will never approve the low quality translations created by over-the-top usage of machine translations and no common sense. These translations are full of holes, lost meanings, mistranslations to a point where they become a fan-fiction. Some of these translations don't even deserve being called garbage.

The criteria for accuracy of translations has been completely abolished, the current criteria of whether something is appropriate to be called a 'proper translation' is whether it's readable or not. Even the worst garbage which is filled with lies and far from original book's content is allowed to stay labelled as proper translation as long as it's edited and readable. Mind, that editing garbage only covers up mistranslations and the fact that a big part of it is fan fiction. It does not correct translations.

Let me clarify the issue of TLC while at it, since there are talks of 'things being TLC'd'. TLC DOES NOT EXIST. There is no legitimate TLC'ers in these series. The only person who can call himself a TLC is someone with proper knowledge of web novels or light novels' original language. And there are none among these series. All over baka-tsuki there's only a few people who actually do TLC, I would be surprised if we found 2 or 3 of them. TLC of a machine translation done by another machine translator is a joke, and not a funny one at that.

And exactly those translations are spreading like a cancer, seemingly they start to infect more and more web novel and light novel series. The results are obvious. Some of these series will never be properly translated by a skilled translator, and will be doomed forever to be inaccurate and filled with fan-fiction garbage. Readers will probably never come back EVEN IF, the series were ever properly retranslated. Except for a few, readers usually do not come back to re-read series. All the readers the are lied to, being given inaccurate and untrue translation.

My stance is to encourage proper translations, translations both readers and above all, books deserve. Machine translations or live translations, anything is fine as the quality is maintained (which isn't being maintained, as mentioned above). In the light of current cancerous spread of subpar quality translations, I decided to distance myself from baka-tsuki as a hosting service for my translations. There are few goals I hope to achieve:

1. To bring more attention to the issue at hand by stirring up a fuss. 2. To avoid having my releases lumped together with subpar garbage that recently started to appear on baka-tsuki. 3. To acquire ranting space I can use to write posts like these. 4. To promote translator individuality, professionalism and high-level dedication to one's series which goes beyond 'translate, drop, forget'. 5. To bring more attention to issue of quality, and promote quality translations. There are many translators who bring you HIGH QUALITY translations by doing their best, the amount of work they do and time they spend is far beyond what the 'subpar-garbage' translations do. Support them, they deserve the support (And I don't mean myself, although it would be nice if you wrote one or two good things). 6. Stop the cancer from spreading onto different series, save the books from being infected.

I wish for nothing more than increase in amount of translated series, and translators doing them. However, it cannot be at cost of translation accuracy. I will support any translator recruitment and encouragement initiative, as well as training initiatives for newbie translators. But I won't support the logic of 'speed/amount of releases>accuracy' which is heretical and should never happen.

As someone who started off with machine translation and memorizing kanji, and through hard work with multiple dictionaries at once to provide accurate translations. I'll encourage all the newbie translators. I might even create a guide to 'how-into-translations' in the future.

But, do not upload garbage for readers to browse through. If one does not have dedication to work on every single piece of work until it's accurately portraying what was written in source language (Japanese, Chinese, Korean), then do not do it at all, or at least do not claim it's translation, I don't want my translations being lumped with that. There is a community on forums.animesuki.com which in many cases is based on spoilers, that is the place you can do your best, and you can help the others who are very eager to know what might happen in the future.

Welcometh

Everyone, welcome to krytyk's translations' site. The site's been designed to maximizing readability and for the ease of navigation. The prime reason for this site to exist is to provide easy-to-read format for translations.

This site is not a homebase of a group, there is no group. There's only krytyk, and this place is just a space for me to dump the translations I do, and allow some people to edit them. That is all.

There is no ads. I do not take any donations. Any positive comments are welcome though.

"4. To promote translator individuality, professionalism and high-level dedication to one's series which goes beyond 'translate, drop, forget'."
⇒ translator has own blog ⇒ translator is more salient ⇒ translator can more easily be held accountable for shitty translations via reputation ???

Is that what you meant? Was that your cunning master plan?

Honestly speaking though, naming LN translators off the top of my head, I can basically only think of you, the guys at NanoDesu, Prozess and whoever was translating Haganai. A lot of translators and 'translators' have their own blogs now, but most of them are translating web novels, and most are in Chinese. When you started this website, did you suspect something like this might happen in the future? That there would be a huge influx of web novel websites, I mean. Not to say they were all influenced by you, but I just mean a greater number of people shifting away from centralised translation hubs like Baka-Tsuki.
I'm pretty sure a good reason that people (MTLers or not) don't pay much attention to Baka-Tsuki is because you and your colleagues all moved out at once, after all.

On another note, I personally prefer web novels because of their frequency of update, and theoretical free reign when it comes to content. Waiting a few months for light novels is just kind of depressing, and here in non-Japan, you can hardly go to the library to browse series that you've never tried before either.
Additionally, a few published LN adaptations of WNs that I've been familiar were taken in directions that I felt were too... commercial, and pandering to the masses. They sort of lacked a lot of integrity. You also get crappy mainstream web novels as well, and also fantastically done LN adaptations (like the Mushoku Tensei and Overlord adaptations) though. What do you think?

Of course, that's massive bias on my part because the only JP language light novels I've read any significant amount of are a few Rakuin no Monshou volumes, and Haganai's last three ones. I know you buy heaps and heaps of LNs, so how is it from your point of view? Do you read WNs too, or do you shy away from them because most of them have terrible writing?

Hiya krytyk. Sorry, i'm gonna be one of those people who come to request/beg for a translation of a novel. I'm not asking you to do it immediately or even this year - and thats if you accept it. but anyways. its a novel i enjoyed and have been left hanging on for the last 2ish years. Since you're from BT you've probably seen it and may know of the sequel(which while related can be read completely independently as its basically a different novel building on the old one... etcetc). Anyways, enough about that,... the novel is tasogareiro no uta tsukai/黄昏色の詠使い/Song Messanger of the Color of Twilight. It was pretty much abandoned by BT in 2013(no new translator has taken it up, i do believe i waited long enough... so this doesn't count as a project steal, blah blah blah). Its Japanese,completed at 10 volumes, and i considered it pretty good. Anyways, please consider taking this up when you finish another series... though you likely have another or even a list of novels you're gonna translate. Welp, thanks for reading.

I think its an amazing novel, really. Though I can think of 2 reasons I'd rather not pick it up on spot. First is, that it's been already started and I would have to re-translate it (I prefer to have entire series for myself for the sake of consistency). The second one is that it's sequel (kinda, just like horizon is sequel to owari no chronicle) is actively translated (?) and on 5 or 6th volume too...

I'm aware of both those reasons, its why i stated the sequel is like 95% separate(this may change later, such as why they're floating on islands... etc etc. qq.) But thats ok, thanks for responding ^.^

Was there a compelling reason for you to omit question marks in tag questions for OSO volume 4? Just wondering. I am slowly relearning English so I'm curious as to what kind of devolutions have been occurring these past decades.

Honestly, the best LN/WN translations I've seen so far are only a little above mediocre in terms of English. That reality should put the term "HIGH QUALITY" in a more humble perspective. Barring geniuses, anyone who has ever tried to do anything in earnest knows that effort does not guarantee results. I admire people who strive to improve. However, looking down on others will not make them look up to you (unless they're too lazy to think otherwise).

I do understand your concerns about getting stereotyped, but I think that's really just you (and PROzess) being paranoid. Fans will remain followers regardless. Those who read MTLs only really do so due to impatience. Eventually, they go back to read proper human-translated versions because they realize that those are significantly more enjoyable and comprehensible.

The difference lies in the way Japanese write stuff, in novels question mark isn't always used to mark a question, often more to add a questioning tone to the sentence. They often ommit question marks while flatly saying these 'questions'. You can find 'どうだろう' ’かしら’ and so on which indicate (just examples!) whilst the tone in which they're spoken is bland and the speaker doesn't expect answer. You can compare it with "I wonder" and "I wonder?" that are different like day and night, for an example... well, it's a complicated matter. On one hand it's a question, on the other... adding a question mark there changes the original flow completely and the sentence changes the way it functions in, thus not as author intended it to.

Another thing is that OSO for example is narrated by the main character the entire time, 100% of time 24/7. Narration is stylized to reflects his thoughts and feelings, thus weirder stuffs happening. Thank god main character isn't speaking/narrating in kansai-ben.

You think I'm derping random stuff? Anything I do is well thought of >.

I did notice how you stylized Kohaku's dialogue. You probably did the same for the others, but that was the most prominent for me. (Good job, btw.) Please don't think I don't appreciate your translations! Q,Q

No, I never thought that. Rants are powerful things. I guess I was thinking (more like wishing) you could have been more diplomatic about it and maybe somehow could have miraculously convinced your antagonists. Oh, well. ^^

I'm a bit late in the bandwagon and have just saw all of these threads about how baka-tsuki has been corrupted by people that are copy pasting whole sentences, or worse, entire page from novels to MTLs, and how everything is going down hill in translation community with the proliferation of uploads of "translation" which should properly be called fan-fiction.

From what I could understand, you guys aren't really that against MTL-assisted translation + research + knowledge of at least basic Japanese to actually be able to understand the sentence in the first place, before actually translating it to English. Therefore, It's rather perplexing and annoying to see how once in a while someone would pop up and defend people like yorai-kun just to have you or someone else point out (if you're not already fed up at that point) that those are NOT the people spreading the cancer.

Machine Translation/Translator/Translated or more often, MTL is such a general term which means everything from people who use it as a tool to the actual site/software itself, it's even worse if you're using MT to address it, since it can also mean Mushoku Tensei (though admittedly, it's a nice pun).
So, with that as a case in point, why hasn't there been an effort to distinguish people who does copy pasting entire sentences off Machine Translation services with little to no command of the origin language to those that are only using it to assist their translation effort? This would really save a lot of typing from your part AND from those who misunderstood your stance.

The situation that came in mind was when Kirito had just announced himself as a Beta-player who trumps over other lousy beta-player in which he was quickly called a cheater, it's actually quite brilliant for the author to have a way to distinguish these kind of specific beta-player who only hoards information for themselves, however badly Beater sounds in English.

MTLs copy paster is distinct enough and can be recognised, in some cases, quite easily enough to merit a specific term, though I'm not good with creating new words, but on the top of my head, MTpaster or MTCP or something at least should be used to differentiate between MT-assisted translator and those who are purely dependent on it. Why has no one ever proposed this before is really unfathomable to me... Unless, it's possible that someone has done it before but it simply didn't get enough traction to launch off the starting point? I guess it's also possible that I'm too ignorant to not have heard it before.
But anyway, that's my two cents for you guys translators to consider.

TL;DR - please use a specific term to distinguish ppl who purely copy paste from MTL with little editing from ppl using it only as an assistance, kthxbye.

for starter, i don’t usually post my opinion because people always have different opinion. But i cannot help it in this case, because you start to insult another translator without good reason, and the one i like at that. so here my opinion, enjoy..
i think its better than waiting for a damn month or more just to read for 1 chapter, and tell the world they are a self claimed professional translator just for a slightly better translation, and start insulting another translator just because they do faster. counting there are so many LN and WN out there.
its not like i will ever read the original, so as long i understand the story, a slight difference between sun and ocean (taiyou) will not affect anything at all.
its for free. they do it with good intention to share what they read. if you don’t like what they do, just don’t read it, or make a better translation, don’t insult it, for you don’t pay a single penny nor pour any work into it.
don’t like my opinion? feeling offended? that what you do to yoraikun. grow up kid.

Also, I don't think yoraikun translates faster than me, does he? I do roughly a full 300 page light novel volume every month on average. That's about 50 chapters of tate no yuusha. So no, I don't have anything to be jealous of :).

i am getting bored and somehow stalking this blog until the oldest post and find this post

frankly speaking i am sorry because i don't know even remotely anything about this problem you brought up and just still happy as long as i am getting some ln translated because i somehow consider myself as professional stalker for various ln based translation and proud to say that i have read almost every ln translated (the fan translations not the official)

but now i must admit that i am ashamed for my ignorance because i understood how grave the problem of mistranslation, honestly bad english, grammar, or language flow is not as bad problem as mistranslation in my opinion because if there is mistranslation and you pointed out in one of your comment that the translator fill the blank with their own imaginations and THAT was a serious problem because by doing so they will directly undermine the author and for avid ln reader like me THAT was blasphemy for author himself. And can't be forgiven with excuse that they are still new or anything else, and in my opinion it can be count as plagiarism because mistranslation like that will make different work than original and not in the realm of problem in translating but became a problem that you somehow make something new or remove some at your convenience and like krytyk said that was in realm or fanfic not translation

as for my personal opinion i am a bit confused with mixed feeling because at some point i feel angry that i was cheated of original work (if it was as bad as the comment make) but still honestly i enjoy reading the so called garbage (my indiscriminate reading know no bounds) arrrrrghhh i don't know what to think anymore and i pity myself if because of this i can't get good sleep for several days T.T
anyway for krytyk thank you for sharing this and sorry for ranting at your blog if you have anymore to share i will be thankful for that

Krytykk, first off thank you for your hard work and dedication to translating. I could be wrong, but your decision to leave BT's site might have opened some eyes. The reason I say this is, in the last few weeks Mushoku Tensei seems to have been revamped. Several chapters have been deleted, then reposted with better results then before. Though I can't say if they're correct or not since I can't read Japanese, but the quality seems to be better.

Once again, thank you for your translations and hard work. Quality over quantity is much better then the reverse.

wow, I`m really suprised that anti-magic and the other translated by you not existed at BT..... and I double check the web until i give up and my friend say to visit this site....... and FOUND IT...... really what a luck. I know its a little late to comment about this matter, but its a place to rant for me too. to be frank i read Mushoku tensei at BT but I only read it up to vol 2, and found the web novel site. so i jump to that site and read it there until the newest volume (vol 20 latest). its pretty enjoyable to read it raw for me cause the joke and other expression is still in original state (mind you that some of the translator cant express the joke/pun clearly that sometimes its confusing) and after some week i read form the initiator of the Mushoku Tensei translator that he will retire/ pass the baton to the other and i dont think it will be like THAT state (Machine Translator PURELY) its really a joke that the translation really raw (and I mean copy paste from MT to BT) and I really shock that no notice that it was a machine translation until the elder take action and say it was not a translation but a preview.

I enjoy mushoku tensei. its a really good story and one of the best HAREM story that not ended up unclear wit other girl relationship ( **SPOILER** getting married and have childern with its HAREM hahhahaha........) and then its being bad spoken (or lose interest) cause of being translated just by MT and call it a TRANSLATION............ its really frustating for me that Mushoku Tensei are the primary cause of MT booming (cancer we call) and lose interest to read it........... I have been a BT customer since 2008 (cause of haruhi) and seeing its growth (and all the trouble and dispute that sprouting other translation team) until now and what happend now is the worst ever that I see in BT.

I just hope this trouble and cancer handled fast and have the quality like the past (primarily zzhk, js06,krytyk, Teh Ping, and the other).

oh lastly, its agood web i think and keep up the good work and pace! (sorry for bad english)

If there are only two mistakes left, it's some kind of miracle. Hurray for me \o/
Seems like it's time to change my habits, I'll be coming here to check your work instead of B-T. It's a refreshing feeling actually. The design is better, same thing goes for the Guhehe's site :o

I wasn't expecting to write such a long text, but I went with the flow. Cursed myself because I had to check all of this but it's what I feel about the current situation. I hope, really, that B-T will be changing its policy about machine translation. I don't mind if I have to visit several sites to get what I want to read, but I fear we're at the beginning of downfall if we're accepting whatever translation for the sake of speed.

On another side, now that I'll be forgetting about Mushoku Tensei, that's mean I have an open slot for AntiMagic Academy o/

I don't know how long will be this message so I'm going to introduce myself first ? Kaengel, French and readers of several novel series. ( If curious you can go to my MAL profile, I actually put a LN corner there ). I should say this now : But I'm real bad at English. Maybe an illness from my country where the majority doesn't even care about foreign languages ? Might be so. Eck, I wasn't even able to put an English sentence together after leaving High-school.

And that's why, precisely because I'm so bad at it, and because I'm catching up little by little in English by reading mangas/novels that the present matter is important to me. Krytyk, you're in the right .

Yesterday I was planning to check on your work on Omae wo Onii-chan... and maybe take a look at AntiMagic Academy. Usually I was doing so by checking the B-T facebook page, but there was nothing from you since several days. Not that strange since it takes a damn lot of time to translate anything but since several weeks you were in a some kind of momentum, you translated a damn lot of thing at once. I firstly thought that you may have burned out from the load of work, but then I noticed that your projects weren't on baka tsuki anymore.

I was like : What the hell is happening here ? Even Elysion that I have read fully wasn't here anymore. Then I found your blog, ( and added it to my favorites cause it took me some time to find it.). I read your huge rant and all. But before answering it I looked for what happened precisely. Then I found about Mushoku tensei. I've read almost all the topic on B-T, the machine translation problem and all.

Worse for me, I was actually planning in the weeks coming to begin Mushoku Tensei. Since the series got some kind of momentum, and a lot of people were talking about it ( even in french communities ). I didn't even know that Machine translation existed in the first place. Seems like I avoided them until now. But the problem is now clearly before me.

I'll be clear. I know that a lot of people want to read their favorites series even at the cost of the quality. Speed only matters to them.
I'm not of this kind.
Like I said in the beginning. I'm bad at English. I never put any efforts to learn it. And then I was 21 years old not being able to read something more than "How are you ? I'm fine thank you - Brian is in the kitchen". And at that time I began to watch some anime, read some manga. And hell, I discovered that some of them were novels to begin with. It became necessary to me to read English.

That's mean : I'm not going to read poor translated series. It's necessary for me to read novels with quality. I don't think I'll be able to read broken sentence in english, or a whole paragraph where two translations from two different machine are put together to form something that the reader have 50% chance to misunderstand. It takes me my whole brain capacity to understand what's written in English to begin with, I'm not going to try to understand the true meaning of a Machine translated text.

Beside, I now understand that japanese is tricky. By using a machine translation there"s almost 100% chance to lost the meaning of a sentence. A translator is able to understand some pun hidden within the text, the true meaning of a kanji and all. A machine can't do that. Eck, I've seen that they're turning kanji into romaji before translating it in English ? How the hell can this be working ?!

A lot of people is complaining each season about anime butchering a novel. I'm part of that when a anime is doing so bad that it's some kind of art. But... Isn't machine translating novel a pure act of butchery ? We're loosing a lot of the meaning, some sentence don't even makes sense anymore. The quality of the language is crappy. I mean, I've read some preview of Mushoku Tensei yesterday before answering here to know what I'll be talking about..

I'm pretty sure that even me can do a better job if I reread what I'll be pasting. I can't understand japanese, I'm having great difficulty with English. I'm not going to translate anything because a machine can do it in my place. Or at least I'll be keeping it to myself. All I can do is saying "Thanks for your hard work" before and after reading a series. It's a freaking bad idea to put online garbage translation.

People looking for quality will not bother coming to the site. People without standard aren't going to understand anything at what they're reading. The preview is up "for those who can"t wait, and a true translator might do the work after that" but... Who will even bother ? If I was a translator I don't think I'll be motivated to use precious weeks to translate an already previewed volume when most of the readers were happy with the garbage translation and will not bother to correct their misconception about the series, and when all of the others reader already fled.

In my case, I prefer reading nothing. Why bother reading something if I'm not going to fully understand it ? It's not like I'll have remorse because of an hard working translator. ( I might have remorse for the editor giving his best to check the garbage... ).

Seems like now I'll have to look out for any translator leaving baka tsuki, to continue to follow him if his motivation for bringing us our loved series didn't fade. I'll follow you here on your blog. On this point I find the design perfect. Even more since I suffer complete achromatopsia, a black background is for me the best :p

Good luck with this blog, sorry for my English and thanks for the series you'll be translating ^^

Thank you for sharing, Kaengel. I understand how hard it must have been for you to write such a long post, considering the difficulties you have with English. Two minor mistakes aside, it was very well understandable and clear.

Good job with the blog. Now I understand why you want to distinguish yourself from bakatsuki. I enjoy your translations of Antimagic academy which I actively read. What I miss is baka-reader android aplication for this novel which I have used but still many thanks for all of your work :D.

I've currently read only one of the novels you translated, but bookmarked the two others for future reading as they seemed to have good stories as well. I'm impressed by the quality and the speed you translate and I hope you keep up the good work! I agree with your stance on the lack of quality in some of the LNs in BT as I've been visiting the site for years, and I have nothing to say on the ones you worked on. I'll respect any decision you'll make as these translations are your own work, passion, and effort, and I appreciate it greatly as someone who loves light novels but doesn't know how to read Japanese like many others here. 100% of the time I read with the BakaReader App due to its convenience in bookmarking itself to the last place it was read per novel, as I always read outdoors with my mobile and not in one sitting. It was also convenient to switch reading in the middle of one novel to another. I hope there will be a time in the future that I can see your novels again in the app and enjoy your work, until then I can only wait. Thank you for everything and best regards!

Would you mind telling me (even in private via email) which series you think are riddled with mistranslations? I primarily want to know if any of the series I've read / am following could have told me a different story than what it really is. Thanks!

I finally found this site ...... I was sh*tting my pants when i found out that 3 of my most anticipated LN disappeared from BT (Especially Elysion .... hell yeah there's finally some development in romance ,Wincest all the way) .You should really put a link or something because my heart almost stopped (Although admittedly it didn't took long for me to find this blog) .I do share your sentiments on the translation quality of MT (Have you read any from volume 18 ,,,,,, that was pure hell for the linguistic part of my brain) although I don't know about the part where it's spreading ,as far as I know only MT is currently heavily machine translated .But as a reader and not a translator its hard to voice any complaints about it since I have no idea how much trouble/effort it takes to do even a bit of TL and only reap benefits from their efforts .As a reader we just kind of roll with it and help edit some stuff if possible and just be happy with the fact that there's somebody translating something that we really wants to read (in English if all possible) and for free to boot .But all in all good luck in your endeavours and thanks for the Translations (I'm really looking forward to more OSO).I'm looking forward to the "how-into-translation" guide ,so I can also pitch in to help more than just with editing.

Hi, I'm actually just starting out with translating, and I would be very interested if you were to create a guide or even link useful webtools I could use to research. For now I'm using the dictionaries suggested by Onizuka-gto on baka-tsuki. I did take beginner's course at Japanese and know basic grammar, but I've never learned Kanji, though I am a fluent mandarin speaker, so recognizing the characters can give me a rough guess of the meaning, though sometimes they differ.

Anyway, I'm just here to support your translations and hopefully get some help with translating :)

I plan to release a guide to learning Japanese in future, for now I can tell you that you should focus on using jisho.org, make sure to learn all of its functions. There's a lot of them. Moreover, I suggest you to learn at least 200 most frequently used kanji as well as master kana (katakana and hiragana) before trying to translate. These are the basics of basics.

Also, I'm not sure if translating webnovels from the get go is a good idea for someone who is learning. That's for one reason, the eye contact with the kanji and other symbols. While using a speedy-way like dumping stuff from a webnovel into a dictionary or translators you don't familiarize yourself closely with how the kanji look like, since it's too easy - you don't learn. I learned by translating AntiMagc Academy, and I know what I'm talking about~. The best way is for you to pick up a new project you like, and no one else is doing then slowly provide accurate translations. In time, your translation speed will increase.

Also, make sure to understand how to separate paragraphs. That's something all these 'webnovel genius translators' can't do.

PS: Onizuka-GTO knows squat about translating, so don't bother too much about what he says. /lololo

I also agree that mushoku tensei's translations have been going downhill.
But a large amount of the readers use BT to find LN translations -so u should atleast leave a link of your site in BT.
Also i only found this site through another site when iwas searching for other LN translation sites.A lot of good LNs are also being abandoned due to foreign publishers registering it like SAO and Hidan no aria ,making it harder to read ,as for some of us ,foreign readers ,it is harder to get hold of them.and since i was caught up in RL i didn't see all this trouble occur in BT as i only usually see the recent changes page when i have the time.
I think you should atleast leave a link to your site in other translation sites such as Japtem or setsuna's blog , so others can easily find your site and your translations.

Like I said in my comment above, please feel free to call out on my idea, I am perfectly fine with the fact that my idea might not have been a good one. However, I do stand by on idea of the meeting of the elders (I really like saying that phrase). I do believe that krytyk can not do anything by himself to change this situation. I believe you (talking directly to krytyk here) should go to the various blogs and set up a date where you guys can do a live chat. There you can flesh out ideas, discuss the future, and vent out your frustrations (a god given right to all quality translators). All the readers here admire your passion and work ethic krytyk. However, you can't fight this battle by yourself. CALL IN THE CAVALIERLY!!! (By the way for those who haven't gotten this yet, I like stating stupid cliches/phrases like this in my posts.) As always, thanks for the great translations you have given us. I hope to hear soon about your next course of action.

Compared to many of you, I am relatively new to the LN community. I began reading them in January/February starting with Campione. As I got more immersed in this community I found both great stories and the hardworking translators that make them available for us. Purely from a reader's standpoint I found myself wanting the translators to provide me two different services. I wanted quality translations which I could easily read and I wanted to get them at a fast pace. However as I learned the difficulties with Japanese, Chinese, and Korean translating I felt satisfied with just the quality translation. However, despite how bad machine translations are (believe me I tried doing it with Ark) the fact remains that it provides the second service readers want and some people are satisfied with just that. So no matter how much I agree with your noble intentions, I do not think that this alone will change things at baka-tsuki. People will still be satisfied with a daily dose of machine translations due to the inherent speed of this process. I did have one idea though (and feel free to call it naive/ignorant if that is the case). You could create a better machine translator. Admittedly this is not something you could do alone. You would need several good programmers and the help of several other pillars of the LN community like Campione's zzhk, Japtem, Imoutolicious, Heretic Translations (where I found the link to your blog by the way), and cautr to name a few. It would be a massive project, but you guys that spend days translating a single page, couldn't you create something better than the sheer crap Google translate spits out? Again please feel free to call this proposal naive and stupid. However, whatever the case I think you guys should convene a meeting of the elders. Set up a chat discussing this very issue and invite all the major translators to share their opinions. If this happens you guys can come up with a plan of action and hopefully cure this cancer. Good luck on your quest, we are all rooting for you.

If I had to come up with an example of a great machine translation. I would go with the "Madan no Ou" previews, because they are done without using a machine as the main source of translation. They are used as a assistance program. If you read Madan no Ou's chapters you'll realize that the machine translation itself is amazing, but putting a whole page into Google translate is not. EnigmaticAxiom who did the amazing machine edits on said project spent quite a while (2 pages an hour) translating, but he didn't just throw a page into a translator. He has a understanding of the language, uses a dictionary and corrects the errors that machine's always spit out. In the end translation programs are only good for small sentences, and are still shoddy at that.

TL;DR. Machine trans are fine when used properly, and time spent fixing, and checking everything.

Wouldn't work. Google Translator isn't so bad because people don't try to make it better. Translating is just so damn complex. Fun fact (I hope wasn't misinformed about this): Google Translator doesn't actually translate, it searches for translations of similar texts and puts them together somehow.

If throwing a few layman translators and programmers together would be enough to create a decent machine translator, it would've been done ages ago, by people who understand more about the structure of language than any of us ever will.

Found your blog after digging around and revisited the Antimagic Academy thread at Animesuki. So that's where Omae wo Oniichan went! I thought I was going crazy when I looked for it repeatedly in Baka-Tsuki. Whew.
You mentioned that you had to delete the links at B-T because you were informed project pages cannot be left empty. I'm curious -- aside from the fact that you protested regarding machine translation and quality control (was it just over Mushoku Tensei or some other series? I don't follow many B-T novels but MT was the only one I know being translated at an absurd rate), what's the difference between you and, say, Japtem, which translates the Chinese light novel series Kill No More, or Imoutolicious? Like you they are hosting their translations at their own websites, but they seem to be able to keep their convenient links at B-T just fine. As a reader I admit I rather like the convenience of a one stop visit, and the permanence imparted by a larger aggregate website, like Batoto is for manga scanlations, though I don't question your decision at all.
I'm happily bookmarking this blog, but it's really kind of strange why they can't maintain your pages the same way that these other translation groups can -- unless of course it was your decision.
And thanks for the translations! Keep up the good work.

He is basically boycotting BT until they actually begin to take this issue into their own hands and do something about it rather than their current stance of supporting it -- or at least that's what I got from his rant. I'm thinking if enough translators decide to join in it would not be a surprise to see some action from BT because, honestly, loosing good translations just to save some bad or machine translations does not sound like a good deal to me.

actually with why you out from baka-tsuki was acceptable, i always check baka-tsuki update and well yeah Mushoku Tensei was one of garbage translation, after seeing many need TLC i thought why they still translate when there's almost nothing they translated by themselves. With this new blog hope you can keep deliver us good translation, good luck krytyk, we all reader on your back supporting you x3

Personally I don't disagree with your decision and think for the aforementioned projects that they should at least make mention of it being MTLed or something along those lines. However I almost think it could get difficult to verify the quality of the translators and translations easily. Honestly they should create some type of test to find out how good a translator is it should not be hard to catch at least some people that use google to translate or something along those lines. Even though my knowledge of Japanese is currently shallow I know how bad most translation tools are at translating Japanese to english. I also would enjoy some tips on translating because I would like to be able to translate at a quality I feel is good enough for others to read. I really would like some good way to learn Kanji because currently that is my weak point and a very integral part of translating LNs. Anyways I hope your rant is heard and that others can see your point.

Whoa...this is the first time I'm hearing about this issue with BT, since most of my favorite hare- *ahem* action series are done by Zzhk-sama I don't have to worry xD well I guess It's a good thing I haven't tried MT yet even though a friend recommended it.

Just out of curiosity though, what does a real translator gain from using a mt? if you have to look it all up anyways it's kind of pointless imo :/

Also @Yascob, it's just my personal hobby but a fun way to learn kanji is to choose some favorite japanese songs of yours and look up their raw lyrics, it's very satisfying singing along with the songs and understanding them. Oh and there's a useful phone app I have called kotoba-chan although there might be a better one. Alternatively you could try some tlcing, or even just looking at the raws of a series and comparing them to the ones translated online, you might even catch a few errors while doing that.

I never picked up Mushuko Tensei, so I never know. Is IS volume 8 also on the cancer? I downloaded a pdf of it a year or so ago and was so seriously turned off that I have yet it pick it up again.

I have been trying to do my own translations supported with MT's when I posted something about doing it on BT a week ago people started trolling me, Having read this understood why they were pissed off. I've learned Kana and some Kanji since then and tarted crawling in the pages in a slug's pace and I still don't get a few lines correctly.
Can you recommend me a dictionary that has the symbols+voicesounds+meaning because all the one that I found only contain sounds+mening :(

I was surprised to find that AntiMagic and Elysion in red in the BakaReader app so I checked out the site. I didn't know Baka-Tsuki was in such a state. So that's why Mushoku Tensei keeps getting updates. I was bewildered by that many edits every time I check stuff.

I hope this issue gets resolved.

On a different note, where did you get or who's the artist for the AntiMagic banner (header51.png) you have here?

Although I haven't read any of your works yet, I would like to thank you for all your efforts.

I started to learn japanese almost a year ago because there is several LN that I wated read but no one would translate. Now, even with the help of many machines, I take 1 hour to translate a page. It's painfully slow, but it is very rewarding. Right now I'm translating Magika No Kenshi To Bashireusu, so I can tell how hard this work is (even with machines), I also can tell how different the phrases became once you know the proper grammar.
All of this to say: thank you for translate Anti-Magic Academy (I would need at least two more years if wasn't for you), and a guide on 'how to translate' would help a lot.
good luck with the site!

I'm a lurker in BT and now i decided to come out because the rifts taking place at the moment but since i begrudge registering in BT forum(idk why but difficult for me) I'll post it here. As a reader I'm actually one who want speed release cause of my impatient nature but since I know it's hard to translate I began to learn how to read it myself and quite fast at that. Than one morning I look at BT and see the Mushoku Tensei page and I'm shocked...Why cause I think even a reader(not translator) like me can do better than that. After that I see the forum and saw some post where reader say they like MT for it faster release, now for those reader I'll share how I learn to read the raw. 1 I began by watching anime, tokusatsu, and Jdrama using fan subs than slowly learn how they speak Japanese. 2 Start watching those in raw version so you can better grasp the language. 3 After you can watch those in raw you should've known many Japanese vocabs and grammar structure 4 Find the raw and put it on GT but don't read the translated part instead read the romanji at the bottom and only use the translated part for reference. -->By this point you should've been able to read it better than those MTL on BT....sigh. Now all you need to do is learn hiragana and katakana than slowly remember the kanji(I'm at this stage and now I know at least 60 or so kanji). By doing this you guys can read it faster and cheaper than finding a Japanese tutor and you can stop plaguing the Translators(real one not MTL) for faster release cause by now you should have known HOW HARD IT IS TO TRANSLATE SOMETHING!! I really respect those translator like Krytyk here who put time and efforts to translate LN for even now if I want to reread something i do it by reading the translated one in BT or other site since it easier and faster than reading the raw myself. Thats all I wanna say and once again Thank you for all translator and good luck in beating up the cancer!! I hope those reader can start doing this chemo treatment lol

wow I didn´t know that all that happen on BT, but I like antimagic LN and would like to read and of course your other translation, I want to learn japanese to transalate LN too...for the good sake of the community, I will cheer on you, Good luck and if you do feel like you need to take a break take it.... you deserve it for you hard work. Don´t push yourself to hard :D

Panicked when I saw that Antimagic, Elysion and Omae wo Oniichan disappeared from the BT pages

Anyways, as for the epub generator, as I recall, it only takes content from the BT wiki and well, generates, an epub copy of the content (not perfect, since some links like the Next Page/Last Page ones get included, but nonetheless ok)

It can't take any content from other pages not part of the wiki, so unfortunately, the 3 series cannot be generated

So, unless someone uploads a proper epub copy of the titles and posts it here, or somewhere in the comments, or even just send it to you so you can make an alternate section for them, or to Simon to make one and post it on the generator (like what he did with Sekaimo guess I'll be reading them normally from the browser....

I was shocked when I saw the pages of Anti-Magic Academy and ELYSION gone from BT D:, I knew you were going to upload your translations in this blog but I did not think that you were going to delete the pages of bt... but well, you must have your reasons.
I wish you good luck with this (the page looks quite good :3), also, do you mind if I make pdfs of your translations? I will give you the credits if you want it. Of course, if you don't want that, there is nothing that can be done xD.
Well, hope to see more of your projects :3

Sure go on, I'm being asked about PDF's all the time but I don't have time nor know-how to make proper PDF's. As for credits, just credit me in the beginning/end of PDF for translations, that's all. I can add the PDF's to the project pages if you want me to, that will make it easier for people to find them.

Way~, thx.
I have done the Anti-Magic 2-3 and ELYSION 2 ones (since the first ones were maked by other guy in BT... but he is gone D:, I hope he is okay), I will make the first ones to keep the style of the pdfs. Also, I'm glad for you offer but, where I will put the links? I don't think spamming the pages of each project with links is a good idea...

I will put the links beside FULL TEXT and MOBI, just paste them in comments. It'll be written "PDF" with hidden link, also if you want I can add you to about page's credits. One's work should be properly acknowledged.

BTW: You could redo all PDF's for all series. There have been lots of changes and edits on all o them, so having the newest version would be cool.

Posted the pdf maked until now, about adding me in the about's page, I think that would be nice, thx :3
About remaking them, I thought the same, it will take time but I will update the pdfs (I've been updating them because mistakes in the furigana words though xD)

Krytyk, just wanted to ask if the Mushoku Tensei translation is that bad, not that it would stop me from reading it or anything but I want to know what's so bad about it? Is it a lot of made up stuff that they put in their or is it the grammar? I mean I know theirs grammar mistakes in it, but i'm used to that and I can find the meaning or gist of what they're trying to say, as long as it's readable. And I know what you want to say; Translations should be accurate and well written and I agree but I need fast and numerous projects to keep me busy and there isn't enough good(maybe dedicated would be a better word but then again i'm mooching of you/them so I have no right to complain) translators out there at the current moment so I look forward to your Translation guide because the best way to change the world is to teach younger people what you believe in. and have them repeat over and over till the entire world are your disciples.

PS- Good luck with your spreading awareness of bad translating!!!
"Also TLC don't exist" LOL so true, i've seen TLC things on their for over a YEAR!!!!

The main problem is that the translations are inaccurate, they don't relay the original content of the book that was released in Japan or the original story from the net. The translators hardly understand Japanese and instead they make up things from their imagination to fill what they don't understand. The result is that there is lots of things that are untrue, things, actions and descriptions that weren't there in original appeared, and even more things that happened or was described disappeared. Mushoku's translation is the worst I've seen ever on BT. Although edits try to cover it up and it doesn't stand out, but no matter how good english to english editing is, it doesn't fix the main issue - mistranslations. Moreover, aside from not knowing the source language (Machine tling), half of the pseudo-translators don't have any translation know-how, the result is - for example - they merge paragraphs which shouldn't be merged. So yeah, Mushoku's tl (90% of it) is horrible and low quality to a point it makes me rage something like that ever appeared on BT.

Hi krytyk,
I love your translations so far. I've been following Antimagic Academy and Omae wo... I started learning Japanese just to read the light novels but I find it a bit hard at my level. Can you share your story on how you start reading the light novels in Japanese and tips on how to translate them. i'm pondering about taking JLPT N3 test so that effort towards that will brush up my Japanese. Had you taken the tests before?

Not at all, I started off with learning about 200 kanji, kana and then I jumped straight into translation. I've been doing basic tls with google translate, but for every single line I spent a lot of effort into researching dictionaries like jisho or kotobank. Before long I learned more kanji, words and Japanese itself. There's quite a few basic things to know about methodology of translating if you want to actually translate. But what's most important is to spend time and double, triple check everything to make sure it's accurate. No matter how slow you are, as long as you research dictionaries while translating, your Japanese will improve and so will your speed. If you want some direct tips then you can jump @ my irc channel rizon@antimagicacademy .

good thing I've read the thread on animesuki,its been a while since I last checked your works,I say keep up the good work and we'll support you,I as a reader really don't like those machine translations its awful to read so good to see you expressing your opinions about that

I was really surprised to find Anti-Magic and ELYSION page deleted, after going into panic and look at your profile i found this.
I have heard about MT problem before, and personaly experience it myself in Mushoku Tensei which in turn make the future looks dark but their team manage reduce the MT it brighten up again.
In conclusion, i support your decision to distance yourself from BT at least until they manage to control the unstopable MT infection.
About the reader, if they love the series they will surely find their way here to read their beloved LN again so i don't think you have to think really hard for the reader.
At the end, i thank you for translating the LN so i can read and enjoy it. Thank you very much,

I was suprised when I saw Omae wo Oniichan's main page deleted then I found your blog x)

I do agree, as a reader I absolutely don't trust MTL for the reasons you mentionned. The only exception was Madan no Ou because I read somewhere the translator knows japanese language and use the MTL as a simple tool. I started to learn japanese just for reading LN but there's still a long way to go x).

Sorry, but I doubt that going as far as deleting the project pages on BT is the right way to show your displeasure with the current situation. What reason is there in translating a LN and putting it online, if the readers aren't even able to find those translations. Do you expect everyone to try and find your blog using Google while looking for a japanese LN they never heard of? BT is the foundation of LN fan-translations and I believe many people, similar to me, use it as a means of navigation to find translations (be they posted on BT or a translator's blog). I doubt that many will find your blog without a reference on BT.
I myself will drop reading all projects posted and deleted by you. I don't want to rummage through the whole net, if I simply want to have a good time reading a novel.
Well, either way it's your decision, but I still beg you to not vent your anger on the readers you supposedly translated those LNs for.
And as a side note. Even though Mushoku Tensei is partially "abused" by machine translations, I still enjoy reading it and I am thankful to everyone who supported the translation of this series and therewith made it possible for me to read it, or otherwise made me aware of its existence.

Although it was not my intention to delete project pages @baka-tsuki and I was asked to, do whatever you want. If you do not want to visit then don't do it. I'm not translating it for money and I sacrifice my free time to do so, I have no obligation to listen to any demands.

Moreover, I have no intention of being dependent on baka-tsuki, nor be held hostage by links. The translations will be updated on mangaupdates as they've always been, and one can find the way to this blog through that page/twitter.

"Sorry, but I doubt that going as far as deleting the project pages on BT is the right way to show your displeasure with the current situation."
Allow me to ask then, in your opinion, what is the correct way to show "displeasure with the current situation"? There are a fair number of B-T translators who have made their dissatisfaction with machine translations abundantly clear, and their complaints have been largely ignored.

"Well, either way it’s your decision, but I still beg you to not vent your anger on the readers you supposedly translated those LNs for."
This just shows that you have little understanding of the time and effort involved in the translation of a light novel. Even discounting the huge amounts of time and energy poured into learning the language in the first place, translating a single volume of a light novel is something that generally takes weeks of work. For someone to post a machine translation instead is a mockery of all that effort, an intimation that manual translation by learning the language is a fool's errand, and when readers place equal value on machine translated work, they validate that opinion.

So can I take that as if you intend to finish the series' that you picked up? If so then that's good news for me since I'm reading you're translations for Anti-magic academy and Omae wo Onii-chan and I'll probably read the others too. Still, thanks for your translations and the illustration edits :D

Well.... you sure are passionate about this.
I only read a few of the things in baka-tsuki so I'm not sure whats happening there...
But since you even went your way to start independently, I'll be expecting a lot from you.

The worst I've read is Madan no ou I guess, but it's more of an issue of bad english instead of deliberate mistranslation. As former translator myself(only 1 volume of IS though XD), it's also concerning to me since those kind of translation will tarnish the name of good translators that translate Kamachi's work, Campione, Biblia koshoten, kino no tabi, mahouka, etc. I guess I'll have to frequent the forum more to raise this concern too.

Madan No Ou's Machine Script was done by someone that understand the language, and only used it as an assist, so I don't believe that Madan's machine script should tarnished. EnigmaticAxiom is the only person on Baka-Tsuki whos machine translations I can trust, because he doesn't just throw it into google, cover it with make-up and call it a translation.

Like I said, although not completely accurate, madan is fine except for bad english here and there that needs heavy english editing to completely fix(and I know because I always check the original Japanese version to check for accuracy in that series), and the problem actually lessen in the later volume, which brings my original question, which series that have such problem because I haven't found any in the series that I follow(I didn't follow Mushoku Tensei).

Omg lol. I only read a few online webnovels since I'm a "picky" reader.
Mushuko Tensei was one of my chosen few but I dropped it because I just couldn't understand what I was reading anymore haha.
Maybe I'll get back to it one day but right now I don't feel like going back and figuring out that mess.

I thinks this is a really good question. It's really frustating when you get excited that an interesting series was translated just to find it so badly done. I was particularly disapointed by the 'works' of some 'RikiNutcase' in BT (Date a Live / Absolute Duo). We should separate that kind of job with the good ones (Besides the ones mentioned here I also am impressed with the translations of Tokyo Ravens by some 'lygophile')

Hmm. I know what you mean about it really only getting worse recently. The explosion in popularity of web novels, combined with the elimination of literally any policy to reign in machine translations and B-T's characteristic disinterest in making sure that projects are managed, seems like it's creating a hostile and demotivating atmosphere full of ego clashes. As long as a series is popular, I'm sure that some "translators" will keep working on it, but all of the half-decent translators will be driven off in the meantime.

Well first of all, congratulations for making this decision, and thanks for keeping the good work on your translations, as a fervent reader of LN I hope you will keep doing this job that although is free, it brings a lot of joy for us (the readers) ^^